land Sound, and we walked through the gate and down to the water. After some time, we both turned away. "It's too sad to look at the house," I said. Andrew nod- ded, and we stood in silence, watching the small waves lap at the sand, foaming up, and then Andrew climbed out on the rock breakwater that extended into the sound. He stood for a while, then he came back. "Are you sad?" I asked. Andrew nodded. "I stayed with him here. We'd drive up from the city in his Volkswagen bug, and I'd take the train back." And then he asked, "Are you d " sa . I'd thought it would be dramatic to come back here with Andrew. I thought I would feel my father's presence again, but, instead, I felt empty. "Let's go to lunch," I said. And we got back into the car and drove to a café. When we sat down, Andrew pulled out a thick folder of letters, twenty-five years of letters, and I began to leaf through them. I've already asked Fr. Pridemore. . . to raise you from the dead-the strange line jumped out. "Raise you from the dead?" I asked. "What is this?" "We hadn't seen each other for a while," Andrew said. "There was a mis- take. My name was on the list of those dead of AIDS read at that Mass, and Paul heard my name, that I had died. It was a mistake. A friend of mine had died, and I'd submitted his name." 'What happened? Did you go up to him afterward?" "I couldn't get to him, but he called my number that night." I had been at that service, and it was during the sermon that night that I'd felt my father almost transfigured in the power of his preaching. It was also that night, years before the discovery of his hidden life, that, feeling the love coming from him as he preached, I had decided to accept who he was, to take the love he gave when he was his truest self: when he was preaching. Now I'd learned that my father had preached that night believing a man he loved had died. A memor y : One Easter, in Jersey City, I am in my new finery, and there he is, dressed in white, accompa- nied by vested acolytes, sweeping along the dusty street on his way to the church; I? . , .... :0 0 0 . _ en en f!IÞ . aaaDDD ï:=ggoo: c::. c:::::I ø t . fr. '1\ f( 1J/;: \J V \: ":'\\\, ,< \ I, , I'\ "1-:"' ,\\ \ " "I; , , , '- T) ----:::--- ./'J _ /' U cc9 ð;} o ? Lf -- 4\ (2.E t\ () '1 "This one's too hard to type on while I'm driving. " . I get not a kiss but a blessing-my fa- ther's hand raised, fingers poised and moving through the air in the shape of a cross. In the darkness at the altar rail, I would hold the wafer in my mouth, al- lowing it to become wet with the wine that burned my throat. Take, eat, this is my Body, my father would say. Just as I came to understand that his splendid vestments were not ordinary clothes, I learned that during the Eucharist the bread and wine were shot through with something alive, which vibrated and trembled, and when I watched my fa- ther, enormously tall, the color of his vestments blurry through all the in- cense, in all the candlelight, it seemed to me he brought all this about. It made sense that when he sang Grego- rian chant his voice would break. He was being transported by what he called "the presence of God," a force much more powerful than his physical body. What happened to him seemed also to happen in me, behind my eyes, on the surface of my skin, and when it hap- pened I didn't think of how my mother looked with a baby on her hip, how my younger brothers and sisters shouted and screamed, or how awkward I felt at school. Instead, everything became . comprehensible-simple, safe, and beautiful. My father told me that when I was little, after sitting through a three-hour Good Friday service and hearing him tell the story of the Seven Last Words that Jesus spoke from the Cross-of how an earthquake "rent" the veil of the great temple, of how Mary watched her son die-I cried and cried. When he asked why I was crying, I said, "Because Jesus died." I don't remember any of that, but I could tell you the whole story, and as I told it I would see the darkness that descended as the rain fell, the light that broke through a gash in the clouds as the sky cleared, how it sounded when the young man on the Cross said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I would tell you about the old rich man who offered his own grave for Jesus at the last minute. I could make you see Jesus' face loosen as he finally died, and what I imagined Mary Magdalene looked like, sitting there on the ground looking up at him, the vials and pots of fragrant ointment in her lap. . NEWYORKER.COM An audio interview with Honor Moore.